Fresno Bee has a story on two people who were lost in Yosemite recently — one lived, one didn’t.
It’s called the “cascade effect” — a catchy name for the way one mistake leads to another, and a quick explanation for how a hiker who takes one step off an established trail is one step closer to trouble.
Park rangers and search and rescue experts say that hundreds of hikers take that one wrong step each year. The key, they say, is where their next step takes them — back toward the trail or further down a perilous path.
Ron Hoggard of Corcoran became lost two weeks ago after leaving the trail for only a few minutes. When he tried to find the path again, he went the wrong way and spent the next three nights with no food and little water, trying to find help.
Hoggard, 58, had never heard of the cascade effect, but said after he was found that he believes it can happen to anyone.
He also believes he was lucky.
In the case of Ottorrina “Terrina” Bonaventura, the cascade effect led a hiker with decades of experience down a wrong trail, and what should have been a short walk with friends turned deadly.
The thing about getting lost is, you have to be ready for it to happen anywhere. I got stuck in thick fog on Mission Peak one time as sundown approached — I knew pretty much where I was and could figure out where I needed to go, so long as there was daylight. After dark would’ve been another matter. All this in a park I felt I knew by heart.
Gotta tale on the most lost you’ve ever been? Add a comment and see if anybody can top yours.
I’ve managed to get disoriented and turned around while rolling back to my camp from the outhouses, just 200 yards away.
On day hikes, I’ve not gotten “lost”, but do have a tendancy for pushing the envelope when exploring new trails – once in awhile I end up coming back in darkness. That’s sometimes a spooky proposition for me.
I hedge my bets by preparing for the worst on each day hike, no matter how familiar. If nothing else, that practice provides an element of comfort, allowing me to be comfortable should I ever get stuck overnight in No Man’s Land. But I understand how easy it is to get turned, to suddenly find that nothing around you looks familiar.
While I can’t ever remember getting lost, I have gotten into hairy situations by going off trail. Most recently on my trip in southern Oregon.
I was trying to get to places that I had hiked to in my youth and found myself looking across a steep valley. At one point, it had been cleared to put in power poles, 35 years later it was just filled with blackberry brambles.
Rather than trek through the brambles, I went to the side of the clearing and tried to find some deer trails. I wasn’t completely successful, but I did step over a fern and find a 4 foot hole where a tree had fallen. Undeterred I continued down and finally linked up with an old logging road. That got me down to the creek and out of the brush. But not before I came across some really good quicksand.
Grimy and bloodied, I staggered in to my folks motel room and suggested that I’m getting a little too old for this shit.
I would be loathe to tell the most amusing stories of my youthful hiking and backpacking exploits. I
Tom, the first time one really experiences fog can be very interesting. In a car on the motorway in the UK there is a strange sense of wellbeing, but when out hiking it can be another matter. These days, having a GPS *can* be very helpful, but when I was a kid with a mate out on Kinder Scout (a well known peat bog area in Derbyshire, UK) I didn’t have such luxuries. Up there a compass isn’t much use, as you jump from peat bog island to peat bog island and when my walking partner took a different hop we didn’t see each other (though we could hear each other) for half an hour. In cases like this you can’t make a fix on a distant point and later we realised we’d taken a horseshoe route rather than the direct one I’d planned.
More recently I was trying out my first GPS out on Mynydd Du near the Brecon Beacons in Wales. I’d grabbed the map, made a vague guestimate as to the length of the journey and set out. I made classic basic mistakes: my breakfast was a ‘fry up’ rather than my usual porridge or muesli, and I found myself with just no power in my legs at all; I set out later than I should have done; my route was just slightly too ambitious; I ended up erroneously ‘believing’ the GPS. The GPS wasn’t wrong, it was my use of it that was wrong. As the light fell an element of nervousness crept in as well as the awareness that this was all my own fault! I made some bad navigational decisions, choosing to rely on what I thought the GPS was telling me rather than properly reading the map, and ended up having to do a bit of bouldering in the dark with a headtorch. Eventually I made it down to the pub and had a grateful pint (of lime and soda – sadly I was driving) by the fire.
That second experience – only a couple of years ago now – dented my confidence for a while, but I have learned from it. Programme your GPS in advance and not on the hoof so that I can refer to it in emergency and it will be of use! Have a decent breakfast. Leave on time. Read the map and the terrain together.
It isn’t quite Yosemite, and you’re never really far from civilisation but cold damp windy conditions quickly lead to hypothermia and that whole process leaves you fuzzy of mind and making even more daft decisions – again, the “cascade effect” stepping in.
My closest experience to getting lost came last year at Henry Coe. I only had a few Coe hikes under my belt at the time and was exploring new trails. I wasn
Getting lost is an art of stupdity, mostly, or blundering miscalculation. Once, in the Mokelumne Wilderness,I ensured Gambolin’Gal we were on the right “track” – in a trackless area — and ended up, after five long arduous hours, retracing our steps in a giant circle. Never did get out of there as planned that night – but were safe and sound until the next morning, when we found the remnant trail just a few hundred yards away.
Tom,
Good write up – but is it recommended? I’m sure we will all see it anyway. Although his writing (hopefully) guided the script – no one was there so I’m sure a lot of cinematic license was taken. Speculation on events, I’m sure.
Heck, just last month I was hiking from Tenaya Lake to Cloud
Rick: Don’t let my aversion to the character scare you off. 80 percent of the critics adored the film, so it must have something going for it.
One evening in August, 1983 on the Wapta Glacier near Bow Lake, Alberta, Canada, we lost our way from the summit of Mount Baker back to a climbers hut (probably the Bow Hut?). The wind picked up and blowing snow and ice made for intermittent white-out conditions. As we hiked in our crampons by compass bearing alone, we encountered a crevasse we hadn’t seen on the way up, and wound up going in circles trying to circumnavigate it.
We did have emergency bivy gear with us, including one sleeping bag for every two people in the group of eight, minimal foam pads, and a couple of nylon tarps. We had one old Svea stove and one pot for melting snow, but not much food. Being far north in the summer, the days were long and the nights were short, but our plan for the day didn’t leave a lot of time for error.
Our very experienced ice-climbing guide, who knew the region well, said that we should probably dig snow trenches to bivy in in case it didn’t clear up in time. It didn’t. We dug the trenches and drank some awful instant soup. The wind actually picked up and so we huddled all night in the trenches, under the tarps, sharing body with two people under each bag, wearing all of our warm gear. I actually managed to sleep now and then.
Sometime in the wee hours of the morning, the wind stopped completely. There was 6-8 inches of snow on the tarps. We all had to dig ourselves out of our trenches.
Barely a thousand feet away, back behind us, was the hut. We had walked right past it and missed it!